


Exhaling Starlight

by chickcheney



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, ep: 1.06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:50:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8886241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickcheney/pseuds/chickcheney
Summary: “I’ve got a place,” Thor says with a smile, and maybe it’s the ghost of the beat still thumping in his ears making him stupid, but Marcus has gotta wonder if all white boys' lips look this soft and pink.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perpetual_wallflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetual_wallflower/gifts).



> For [perpetual_wallflower](http://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetual_wallflower) who said they wanted something with Dizzee and Thor. I love these two, and I love how you brought up that Thor was helping Dizzee realize more about himself, so I focused on that. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Happy Holidays!

Being inside the club is like being inside a star: heat and smoke and the bay of darkness pooling in from all sides kept at bay by the impossible lights streaming in from above, below. Bass pounds in Marcus’s ear and travels down through his veins and works his muscles into lazy rhythmic beat, like his nerves are a snake and the music and the atmosphere are talented snake charmers making bank.

It’s easy to get lost in. Too easy. When someone grabs his arm and tugs, he follows without a thought. The beat is too loud, too powerful for such things as thought.

He catches a glimpse of shiny blond hair through the haze of smoke and pheromones. Marcus relaxes as he realizes it’s Thor pulling him across the dance floor and toward the exit.

The music’s even louder outside somehow; like all that rhythm, all that attitude can’t be caged in nowhere. But the evening air is clear and crisp and refreshing. It clears the fogginess in his head and sucks the groove right out of his limbs, like a robot whose switch has been flipped.

“You okay?” Thor asks him.

He has to clear his throat before he speaks. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Something wrong?”

Thor shakes his head. “Nothing. Just needed some air. Kinda looked like you needed some, too.” Marcus doesn’t know what he means by that—being inside had felt like he was about to burst open, but in a good way—but he shrugs and nods anyway. “You wanna get outta here?”

Part of Marcus wants to stay in this new world he’s discovered, but an even bigger part wants to go wherever Thor wants to take him. “Sure. Where to?”

Thor starts walking, and Marcus jogs to keep pace. He doesn’t know how late it is, but the street lights are on the and city’s got that busy energy that only happens when it’s dark enough for the heathens and working girls to come out. 

“I’ve got a place,” Thor says with a smile, and maybe it’s the ghost of the beat still thumping in his ears making him stupid, but Marcus has gotta wonder if all white boys’ lips look that soft and pink. “A place I go to think and make sense of the noise to turn it into art. You wanna see?”

Marcus lets his intrigue and excitement show through his smile. “Hell yeah.”

Lit windows help illuminate the way down the wet, faded red brick road to wherever Thor’s place is. It feels as if they’re just roaming around aimlessly. Thor leads them down so many twists and turns that only the tagged buildings and stained bricks remind Marcus they’re still in the South Bronx at all. Thor takes every step surely, confident in his stride as Marcus’s scene him be with half full cans, so he he trusts and follows silently.

The silence between them is comfortable and familiar, so he lets his attention wander. The city is beautiful like this. Imperfect, but beautiful. The dark outline of the buildings are like rough brushstrokes against the grey-dark sky. The mismatched red of the brick buildings and half-filled clotheslines tell a million stories. Marcus could trace the cracks along the sidewalks like vines up to a stalk, trace their curves and find out what secrets are hiding underneath New York City’s belly.

Sometimes he thinks he might be able to do that with Tho, too. Trace the lines in his smile, the wrinkles in his eyes when he laughs, the veins in his arm when he’s gripping a can and poising to breathe art into a plain surface. Here, in the moonlight, amongst the street lamps and burned out neon signs, Marcus thinks he almost looks like a piece of the city itself, a shining piece of perfection amongst beautiful rubble.

“It’s right up here,” Thor juts his chin up to a fire escape and starts climbing. Marcus climbs up after him.

They keep climbing until they hit the roof. Thor pulls himself up with a sure ease that says he’s done this a million times. Marcus, for all the walls he’s scaled in his quest for beauty, feels winded by the time he hauls himself up to the flat top of the roof. He flops down on his back and sucks in a deep breath.

Thor throws his head back and laughs. “You okay over there?”

Marcus throws his hands up. “That was a real long walk, man. How you do this all the time?”

“It’s not all the time, just on special occasions.” He offers Marcus a hand and Marcus takes it. Thor isn’t that strong, but he hauls Marcus up with only a soft grunt. 

He only comes here on special occasions, he thinks. I’m a special occasion.

Thor doesn’t let go of his hand right away. If he were anybody else, any other boy, he would have. Boys didn’t touch other boys’ hands for long. Boo-Boo wouldn't. Zeke wouldn’t.

“Come look over the edge.” Thor squeezes his hand once before dropping it and walking over to the edge. Marcus just stands there watching Thor inch to the edge and titter there, almost shakily but not quite. He spreads his arms out to the side for balance and tips his head back, hair spilling down his back and blowing gently in the wind.

All of a sudden Marcus is reminded of an angel spreading its wings, but that isn’t right. Thor doesn’t have wings. He isn’t an angel. He’s one hundred and ten percent human, and there’s something breathtakingly beautiful about that.

He walks over to the ledge and takes a peak over. The city is like a miniature version of itself from up here, much higher than Marcus has ever been before. It’s almost like a different planet up here. If the club was a star, then where is this place? So far out in the galaxy the wind takes his breath? Miles and miles away from the South Bronx where the only things he can see are lights and the impossible green of Thor’s eyes?

Up here, far, far away, where he can hold a boy’s hand for as long as he wants to?

Thor lowers his hand and Marcus grabs it without thinking. Thor jumps a little and teeters off the edge and back solidly on the roof. He looks down at their joined hands—pale and dark, night and day—and looks back up at him with a smile.

“Yeah?” He whispers softly, as if they aren’t all the way up here, lightyears away from the South Bronx, from New York City, from the world.

His nerves scream at him to move in, to do something more, but he can’t. Maybe they aren’t far enough away yet. The thought of kissing Thor sends as much pleasure and want through him as it does fear and dread. That’s another thing boys don’t do. Boys don’t kiss boys. Boys shouldn’t _wanna_ kiss boys. Boys should wanna kiss fine honeys, not soft blonde boys rooftops.

He doesn’t understand what it means, but looking into Thor’s eyes right now, he thinks maybe that’s okay. Maybe he doesn’t have to right now. 

“Yeah,” he answers back with his own smile and squeezes Thor’s hand in his. Thor smiles like he understands the storm of uncertainty in Marcus’s thoughts and, yeah. It’s enough.


End file.
